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MCLEAN, Va.  Todays Christian no longer has to try to maintain only by faith their belief in the origin of the universe. The atheist now does.

Former atheist and award-winning Christian author Lee Strobel premiered his one-hour documentary "The Case for a Creator" to hundreds of Christians at an apologetics conference Friday. The aftermath of the movie: Christians felt they actually learned something.

"We are actually living now at a time of tremendous intellectual renaissance of Christianity," said philosopher and author Dr. William Lane Craig.

Craig's comment came after fellow philosopher J.P. Moreland told conference participants that the church has become anti-intellectual.

"We've got to start using cognitive language and not just faith language," Moreland exhorted.

Over the last several decades, Christians have begun to emerge back into the intellectual public square. This is primarily occurring in the field of philosophy, New Testament studies with regard to the historical Jesus and the gospels, and it is now beginning to occur in the physical sciences as manifested in the Intelligent Design movement, Craig explained.

Presenting clear scientific evidence that Christians had largely been without, Strobel's "Case for a Creator" revealed a complex universe that many scientists could now only explain with the existence of some kind of intelligence.

Biochemist Michael Behe demonstrated how bacterial flagellum are molecular machines that could only function with all its parts present simultaneously, much like a mouse trap. If one part is missing, it would not function and would thus have no reason to exist. Evolution would not preserve it.

Such evidence as Behe's was presented in other scientific fields including cosmology, physics and astronomy in the documentary.

"I believe that by doing science, we find God," said Strobel.

Philosopher Jay Richards of Acton Institute concluded from his findings that the universe was designed for discovery. And with each discovery, the Darwinian theory of evolution is expected to go down as "a huge mistake in history," Richards said.

One participant, Robert Wedan, 53, praised the documentary, saying that it gave him stronger grounds to defend Creation. "It's movies like [Case for a Creator] that I think will make it a lot easier to address those issues."

"Today, science is pointing more powerfully to a creator than any other time," said Strobel. "The most logical and rational step is to put my faith in the Creator that science tells me exists."

Now, Christians can stand confidently within biblical truth knowing that it's in line with astrophysics and cosmology, said Strobel, quoting a cosmology expert. "It is now the atheist who has to maintain by faith, despite all of the evidence to the contrary, that the universe did not have a beginning."